Shadowy Tormentors inhabit this dimension, and emerge from it to torment death knights such as Koltira Deathweaver. The Lich King originally kept them at bay, but after the Knights of the Ebon Blade left his service, the tormentors are now loose upon them. He even appears in the World of the Dead, as he calls it, riding a frost wyrm during [73] The Power to Destroy.

In the opening cinematic, Sylvanas shatters the Helm of Dominion, breaching the veil between the material realm and the Shadowlands, an ancient dimension where the dead coalesces for judgment. Sylvanas' actions have upset the natural balance between life and death, and it's on players to enter the Shadowlands itself and repair the cycle before it is too late.
The Shadowlands can be seen as a shadowy version of the physical world, and can be routinely visited as a spirit when player characters die. Governed by the Covenants, the four ruling realms of the Shadowlands are Bastion, Ardenweald, Revendreth and Maldraxxus (although countless others exist), which serve as the main setting of World of Warcraft's eighth expansion.[5]